Sony VAIO SZ6 and Ubuntu

I purchased a Sony VGN-SZ650N/C in September 2007. Full specs are here. It’s a great laptop except for the fact that you have to pay the Microsoft Tax and that the preinstalled vista has a whole heap of junk preinstalled (I’ve never seen anything quite this bad before. Anyways, this is not a review, there’s plenty of those online already, but an attempt to document my efforts to make the GNU/Linux distribution: Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (32 bit)Â run smoothly on this laptop and by extension, hopefully the rest in the VAIO SZ6xx series. Most of the stuff in here is more or less distribution independent and should work on recent version of Fedora/OpenSUSE/Gentoo/whatever as well. I have not had the time to spend too much time on all of the items below yet, this is very much a document “under construction”. If you happen to have something working which I have not mentioned/solved yet please write me and I will put it here (and give proper credit of course).

Installation

The installation worked without any problems (using Ubuntu Gubsy Gibbon Tribe 5), I used the “stamina” mode.

Sound

Worked partly out of the box. The sound works, but speakers are not independent from the head phone plug. This means that plugging in head phones does not mute the speakers, and the speakers cannot manually be muted without also muting the head phones. In general, alsa exports very few controls for the sound card (which is a Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) ). Ubuntu is running Alsa version 1.0.14, and the changelog for 1.0.15rc1 lists a lot of changes to the snd-hda-intel driver, which is good. I have not tried installing any release canditate of 1.0.15, but will probably try it.

Update:
I installed alsa version 1.0.15rc2 and now the speakers are muted when the headphones are inserted. The microphone works as well after enabling it in the mixer. Using the GNOME alsa mixer, it looks like this:

Suspend/Hibernate

Suspend/Resume works with the 2.6.23 release of the linux kernel. See The Master Kernel Thread for help on compiling your own kernel. Note that you will have to install the wireless drivers for the Intel 4965 wlan card as well, which is a bit tricky. More information about that process can be found here.

Fingerprint Scanner

Webcam

Brightness Controls

Not working yet.

Stamina vs. Speed mode

Not tested yet, should work out of the box. You need to use different xorg.conf files. This little script by Ariel Vardi copies the right xorg.conf file on startup depending on whether or not the nvidia card is activated or not.

I got an SZ650N recently and this page is great! I haven’t been able to get the touchpad working as it should, i.e. with tap-drag to drag windows, or with scrolling. Also, the lid switch doesn’t work for me.

That can happen if you let your battery deep discharge – I did that by accident a few times with my old Acer Aspire by leaving it suspended for ages. I just had to let it charge for a while before trying to switch it back on.

I actually switched to Fedora 9 after a short stint of Debian unstable. None of that should matter though, Hardy Heron ought to have the right version of alsa for this to work. Is the sound muted when you plug in your head phones, or does nothing happen at all? (Or does sound come both the speakers and the head phones)

Without this line, options snd-hda-intel model=vaio in alsa-base, I get sound but only from the speakers. When I add that line, I get no sound. It’s not that the sound is muted. I checked both the gnome alsa mixer and alsamixer in the shell.

My sound worked with alsa 1.0.15, so I thought I’d go back to that. I’m having troubles compiling it, however.

Just an update that it appears a fingerprint scanner solution is in the works and UPEK had confirmed several times that a driver is in alpha and hopefully beta by now. I have emailed them requesting the driver if it is to beta condition (they targeted a 5/2008 release).

Also a developer named Daniel Drake has said he most likely can work with it, but I believe has held off waiting for the offical one. Read more at:

Well I got a reply. It’s not a driver they are releasing, but rather a SDK. According to the EULA the library itself is redistributable so it looks like we have what we need now to write a interface, possibly integrating with fprint. Mirek Buran, the same guy others have talked with is how gave me the link and again asked that I not redistribute the package of course.

I’ll work on a proof of concept / test that it works and update here soon!

I’ve got a Vaio VGN SZ61 and first of all I have to say thx cause youre page helped alot since I´m new to Linux.
If brought the Motion Eye Camera to work with the R5U870 driver, but it but it works not correctly with wengophone and linphone(Wengo->Alot of Green Pixels in the Picture, Linphone->Totally distored Picture, mostly black). I was wonder if you maybe know what this problem may cause or if other SZ6 useres have the same problem.

I guess I never really used the speed/stamina switch or something, and only recently learned that it switched graphics chips. Now I want it to work, but I guess it is broken. With the switch in either position lspci never lists nVidia.